NOVEL

I recently published a book, Goodbye Iran which is the true story of two young men, Hossein and Hamid, and a young woman, Afsaneh, who in 1983 decide to escape from the repressive and institutionalized land of their birth in search of a better life. The book follows them on their real-life journey, full of difficult decisions, intense joys, and bitter disappointments as they set sail to say goodbye to Iran forever>>>

NOVEL

As children, my friends and I had no shortage of inventive, novel, and ingenious obscenities to hurl at each other. However, nothing stung as much as being called a namard (lit. ‘non-man’) or bi-gheyrat (lit. ‘honourless’). Similarly, while one might not have made much of another’s anger or frustration, the minute the word namoos (honour) was uttered, you knew things were going to get ugly. Elif Shafak’s latest novel tells the story of the Toprak family, and the troubles that befall them after an illicit extra-marital affair takes place>>>

FOOD

A story of growing up in Shiraz of the 1960s told through memories of food and cuisine, A Sip, a Bite, a Mouthful contains an account of Iranian customs, passions and rituals; it depicts a vivid picture of life in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran; and it touches on experiences of Iranian expatriates and the migration of their favourite foods, feasts, tastes and eating habits to the west>>>

NOVEL

Although the novel received much acclaim at the time of its publication over 40 years ago, and is widely regarded as an excellent account of the zeitgeist of a distant period (aside from being a stunning work of literature), it hasn’t lost its relevance in the slightest. The jacket of the 1991 edition describes Savushun as a ‘novel about modern Iran’, and while such a title may be considered as somewhat vague, and perhaps, presumptuous, it’s incredibly accurate>>>

28 MORDAD

Ahmad Shayegan, his eldest son, has published his memoirs (in Persian) titled, “The Political Life, Writings and Speeches of Seyed Ali Shayegan,” Agah Publishers, 2005, Tehran. In dedication to Ahmad and all the men, like his father, who stood by the man who sought nothing except dignity and prosperity for his nation, I took a few pages from the book and translated them for this occasion>>>

BOOK

Human beings have always believed in supernatural things, even those that may defy conventional wisdom or are considered scientifically refutable. Scientists and theologians have offered different answers to the question of why people believe in general, especially why they believe in strange things. In his newly published book The Believing Brain, author Dr. Michael Shermer, who is the founder of the Skeptic Society, tries to provide answers to this and similar questions by relying on scientific analyses
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BOOK

Chad Sweeney teaches in the MFA program at California State University, San Bernardino and lives in Redlands. He is the author of four books of poetry: Wolf’s Milk: Lost Notebooks of Juan Sweeney (Forklift Books, 2012); Parable of Hide and Seek (Alice James, 2010); Arranging the Blaze (Anhinga); and An Architecture (BlazeVOX); and he is co-translator of the Selected Poems of contemporary Iranian poet H.E. Sayeh>>>

NOVEL

Masoud Behnoud's epic novel encapsulates the massive upheavals of the first half of the twentieth century, including the Second World War and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, from a point of view that the English-speaking readership rarely glimpses. The book’s heroine, Kahnoum, is born in the courts of Persia’s Qajar Dynasty in 1900, but is forced to leave the comfort of her aristocratic home and flee for Europe during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906>>>